A computer network is a collection of interconnected computing devices that can exchange data and share resources. In a packet-based network, the computing devices communicate data by dividing the data into small blocks called packets, which are individually routed across the network from a source device to a destination device. The destination device extracts the data from the packets and assembles the data into its original form. Dividing the data into packets enables the source device to resend only those individual packets that may be lost during transmission.
Certain devices, referred to as routers, maintain routing information that describes routes through the network. A “route” can generally be defined as a path between two locations on the network. Routers include a control plane, sometimes called a management plane, which maintains the routing information, and a forwarding plane, which forwards received packets according to the routing information.
The goal of high availability computer network environments is to provide users and other entities with “always on” service. That is, high availability computer network environments should provide reliable, continuous operation service. To accomplish this, network devices in a high availability environment perform error detection and implement recoverability for detected errors. Unfortunately, network devices occasionally fail.
When a network device fails, all network traffic flowing through the failed network device may cease. For an enterprise that depends on such network traffic, this may be unacceptable, even if this failure occurs only for a short time. To minimize the possibility of a failure causing all network traffic to cease, redundant hardware such as a standby controller or a separate standby network device may be installed. When the primary controller fails, this primary controller (which may also be referred to as a “master controller”) may switch over (or, in other words, fail-over) to the standby controller. Likewise, when the primary network device fails, this primary network device (which may also be referred to as a “master network device”) may switch over (or, in other words, fail-over) to the standby network device. After failing over or switching over to the standby device, the standby device becomes the master device.
Redundancy in devices or controllers that extends across two or more chassis provides enhanced reliability. Current inter-chassis redundancy solutions, however, are geared toward providing redundancy across two homogeneous chassis within the same network. A typical network, however, is not a collection of homogeneous chassis.